Inside The Wire 299 | January 2009

2008 Rewind by Ben Weaver

The Masthead 4

Letters 6

Bitstream 8 News and more from below the radar

The Joined-up World of The Wire 9 What we are up to online and elsewhere

Trip Or Squeek 9 By Savage Pencil

Bites 10 FM3’s Buddha Machine II and Ken Hollings’s Welcome To Mars

Charts 38

Out There 78 Festivals, concerts, gigs and club listings

Reviews Index 39

Soundcheck 40 This month’s selected CDs, vinyl and downloads, including new releases from Skullflower and John Edwards plus Soul Jazz’s Fly Girls! compilation. Plus avant rock, critical beats, dub, electronica, hiphop, jazz & Improv, modern composition, outer limits, unusual formats and reissues

The Inner Sleeve 63 Blevin Blectum on Jim Copp and Ed Brown

Print Run 64 New music books, including John Tilbury on Cornelius Cardew, plus Amanda Petrusich searching for the next American music, and Nico in the 80s

On Screen 66 Attack On Silence by Mark Fell and Notes On Marie Menken on DVD

On Site 67 Gallery and mixed media events, including New York’s ScrapCycle and Yoko Ono at London’s Frieze Art Fair

On Location 68 Concert and festival reviews, including Unsound, Drifting And Tilting, Ear To The Earth and Release The Bats, plus Keith Tippett, The Bug and more

Emeralds 12 Nick Richardson gets lost in the Kosmische-inspired drone of Ohio’s analogue converts

Peverelist 14 Derek Walmsley on how the Bristol bass technician’s sound is rooted in futurist beats and the idea of perpetual motion

Global Ear Knoxville, Tennessee 16 Eric Dawson discovers an underground scene inspired by Cormac McCarthy and Sun Ra at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains

Cross Platform Peter Liechti 18 The Swiss film maker reflects on the ‘sound film’ he made with electronics duo Voice Crack . By Jon Dale

Invisible Jukebox Animal Collective 20

The post-psychedelic ensemble gather round the campfire with The Wire’s mystery record box. Tested by Alan Licht

2008 Rewind 24

The Wire’s review of the year’s best music, including our Top 50 Records of the Year, writers’ and musicians’ reflections, plus Joseph Stannard on the year in riffs, Simon Reynolds on archival glut, Nick Cain at music’s outer limits and Lisa Blanning on the dancefloor

Epiphanies 90 Hugo Wilcken explains how Joy Division brought visions of post-industrial Europe to the beaches of 80s Sydney